Personal Experience of a Physician | Page 9

most careful experiments. Everyone can understand that if
we give an Allopathic dose of Ipecac to a patient already sick and
vomiting, or of Veratrum album to a patient suffering from Asiatic
cholera or cholera morbus, we will almost certainly aggravate the
disease, perhaps to a fatal extent; for it is the reaction of the vital forces
of the system against the new excitement caused by the remedy, which
overcomes this new excitement and the diseased action at the same
time. Now, if the action of the remedy is so severe that no reaction
follows, then, of course, no cure follows, and even death may result.
The great beauty and excellence of the Homoeopathic system of
medicine consists in the ability to treat patients successfully thereby,

without making well organs sick, or aggravating existing diseased
action, or creating an opposite diseased state, as you do when you give
a cathartic remedy in a cathartic dose for constipation; in that case the
reaction, if reaction follows, is not in the right direction, consequently
the constipation is often aggravated. I have hardly ever seen, excepting
in cases of mechanical obstruction, a severe and troublesome case of
constipation that had not been caused by the use of cathartic remedies.
So if we give an opiate, or an astringent, for a diarrhoea, we can see
that it is a direct effort to restrain the disease by force, as it were, and
we necessarily have to give large doses; and, if the vital forces react
against this medicinal intrusion, the reaction is not in the direction of
health. It is true that the vital forces sometimes overcome the diseased
action in spite of the medicinal action; but it does not always do this,
and subacute and chronic diarrhoeas are the result of the use of such
remedies in some cases. To create disease of a well organ for the sake
of curing disease in another organ, as is done when blisters are applied
to the skin for diseases of internal organs, and when cathartics are given
for diseases of the head or lungs, every one can see is a roundabout
treatment; and while patients may sometimes be benefited by this
calling off, as it were, the attention of the vital forces from the diseased
action in other organs, still it is not a very satisfactory treatment as a
whole; for you may lessen the vital power of resistance against diseased
action, and may even cause serious disease of the organ assailed. I
repeat, one of the great beauties of Homoeopathy lies in the fact that
when remedies are given in accordance with its law of cure, they do not
have to be given in disease-creating doses.
Hahnemann tells us that a single dose of the 30th dilution of Aconite,
which contains but the decillionth of a drop of the tincture of the
remedy, will cure acute pleurisy in twenty-four hours. I have thus
treated patients suffering from pleurisy with a single dose of that
remedy (it should be given soon after the commencement of the
disease), and at the end of twenty-four hours have found the pain and
fever all gone, and the skin moist and cool; and in one instance within
two days the patient was on his way to California. I have never seen
any such satisfactory cures of that disease from any kind of Allopathic
treatment, nor from the low dilutions of Aconite or any other

Homoeopathic remedy.
Hereafter I shall call attention of both physicians and the clergy to the
causes and different methods of restraining or curing both spiritual and
natural diseases; for there is the most beautiful analogy or
correspondence between the methods of treating natural and spiritual
diseases, and they must be considered in connection if we would
clearly see the truth.

CHAPTER III.
THE DANGERS THAT RESULT FROM THE ALLOPATHIC
TREATMENT OF DISEASES.
This treatment of diseases, more in the past than at present, consists
largely in giving and applying remedies in disease-creating doses. The
antiphlogistic treatment consists of blood-letting and the use and
application of reducing remedies which directly or indirectly lessen the
inflammatory or febrile action; but it is manifest that while it may
lessen the activity of the diseased symptoms it also lessens the vitality
of the system as a whole, and consequently its power to resist and
overcome the existing diseased action; so that it is a serious question
whether in many cases more is not lost than gained, and it is certain
that, owing to the loss of blood and strength, convalescence will be
more tedious. Then the use of remedies which cause active diseased
action is not always safe. My own mother, at the age of 51 years, while
in delicate health, was taken with a severe pain in her side. A